WMA: A Marking-Based Synchronized Multimedia Tutoring System for English Composition Studies

This paper presents a system, Web-based Multimedia Annotation (WMA) system, for English as Foreign Language learning in writing skills. The whole correcting process, including the instructor's voice and navigation events (i.e., tele-pointer (cursor), highlight, pen strokes, markings and annotations), can be captured through our system for later access. We address the issues of exploring involved media correlation to benefit adaptable presentation in a synchronization manner from temporal, spatial and content domains. The proposed computed synchronization techniques include speech-event binding process in the temporal domain, tele-pointer movement interpolation and adaptable handwriting presentation in the spatial domain, and visualized annotation erasing in the content domain. The experimental results show that in the speech-event binding process 74% of speech access entries for accessible visualized annotations are found. The acceptable rate of human perception of tele-pointer movement is higher than 85% if time interval is selected carefully. The accuracy of visualized annotation erasing for content removal is about 71%. Our user study shows that students can devote their efforts to writing practice because they can better understand their own mistakes corrected by the instructors using this multimedia presentation.